Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Raises, Gov. Quinn? Really?!

An Associated Press report found that [Illinois Gov. Pat] Quinn has given 43 salary increases averaging 11.4 percent to 35 staffers in the past 15 months.

But Quinn said that despite the pay hikes, the budget for the governor's office is less than it was when he took over for disgraced ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in January 2009.

"I raised individual members of my staff when they had a new assignment that required them to do a different jobs," Quinn said.

Which tone-deaf numb-nut OK'd raises in the governor's office during these times of "shared sacrifice"? True, the dollar amounts aren't large given the crushing size of the state's budget woes, but the outlay of political capital here is huge. The campaign attack ads almost write themselves.

Posted at 10:17:01 AM

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EZ you keep saying every ridiculous expenditure is an insignificant part of the states budget woes but they all represent the root cause. The state government spends too much on each and every single item in its budget. There's not one single department or program that's running anywhere near peak efficiency because they have no incentive at all to run at peak efficiency.

Cut 'em all and make them justify every single expense item line by line. Then cut unearned pension benefits and go to court.

You clueless donkey....how many times do you actually think you can slap Illinois taxpayers in the face and still get away with it? Unemployment is at an all-time high, millions who were struggling to get by with the mere pittance afforded by unemployment benefits have been cut off, you raise taxes, you increase the percentage of the 1st installment of property taxes (but didn't bother to tell homeowners), you increased the cost for license plate stickers (but didn't tell anyone)...the list goes on and on. So many are having to do without........it becomes of choice of....well...do we eat today or pay the electric bill........do we sell the car so we can make the house payment? That means nothing to you as you hand out 43 pay raises to people who are already making 6 figure incomes. REALLY......WHAT DO THEY DO THAT WARRANTS A 6 FIGURE INCOME? You continue to hand out grant money like it's candy, you continue to fund services for ILLEGALS. Your "Put Illinois To Work" program is a major joke. You are doing NOTHING to right the sinking ship which is The State Of Illinois.......come November, the only words coming out of your mouth will be "would you like fries with that".

I have yet to find a reason that would encourage me to vote for this man. His whining that nothing will be done 'til after the elections, so he'll give his staff raises for the lack of anything else to do? Instead of raises, the governor and his staff, (and the legislators) should return their salaries for the past eighteen months. They haven't done anything to earn them.

And Quinn wants to raise the income tax rate. You've heard this song from me before - we'd all feel better about taxation if we could feel that our money was being spent wisely and well. Instead, we get this relentless drip-drip-drip of disclosures of our money being spent frivolously, illegally, or downright being wasted. This is just the latest; Gov. Blagojevich's various stunts, "My Money" Madigan, the Toddler's "Friends and Family" (and connected busboys) hiring plan, on and on.

"I raised individual members of my staff when they had a new assignment that required them to do a different jobs," Quinn said. Even that doesn't cut much ice; we're all being asked to take on more responsibility, and precious few of us in the private sector get a raise as a result of it. Only in the public sector . . .

Even the ARRA (stimulus) money doesn't seem to be spent well. Resurfacing roads that don't need it, redecking bridges that need only minor repair (and doing a poor job of it; have you driven the bridge over the river and the canals in Willow Springs?) It's just a jobs program; it would be better to divert some of that money to the extension of unemployment benefits that's stalled in Congress.

George W. Bush was right. If you want money spent efficiently and in a way to benefit the economy, you should leave as much of it as possible in the hands of private citizens. The power to tax relieves the public sector of all sense of responsibility; if they spend what they have and want more, all they have to do is raise the tax rate.

I bet there really was a good reason for every one of those raises, but this is still just a terrible, terrible idea. Maybe Quinn has covertly given up on the Dems and is actually campaigning for Rich Whitney? ;)

Yes DaveB:
George W. Bush really knew what he was saying when he said private companies spent money wisely!
There was a surplus when he was put there in the Supreme Court's coup & there was a deficit almost immediately!

And for wise expenditures of private money, there's Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs & locally Broadway Bank, along with a hundred others that went belly up.
Oh, and BP sure spent its money wisely, didn't they?
In order to save a few million, the bill is at least $20 billion & not one lawsuit against them has been settled yet. Expect a bill of at least $100 billion & the end of BP!

We don't know the particulars. As bad as this looks in the macro, these may be very few raises I the big scheme of things, and they may have been well deserved due to previous underpayments or changes in duties.

While none of that amounts to a hill of beans in the PR scheme of things, it doesn't mean the raises weren't justified.

Another: There was a fly that came upon a large piece of baloney with a fork stuck in it. After eating his fill, the fly found that he was too stuffed to take off. Thinking that would help, he climbed up the handle of the fork and took off from there. Being too heavy to fly, he fell to the table and - Splat! - was killed.

Like all stories, his one has a moral, and it is: Don't fly off the handle full of baloney.

According to Quinn, his budget manager has 70 direct reports!!!! Quinn actually said that with a straight face.

Having worked for a conglomerate with a far bigger budget than $25 billion, I can tell you that's a joke number. His budget manager is either clueless or lazy, don't know which. He's certainly not underpaid.

And Quinn is claiming 70,000 new jobs created in Illinois in 2010??? Are those census workers? Minimum wage store clerks? Quinn has no clue when it comes to numbers and reality.

OK DaveB: Private citizens run all those private companies. Happy now?
After all, how many government workers were running all those banks, BP & whatever else went bankrupt? I think the number is none!

Liz:
As I read it, BP's primary concern was that the well was taking far too long to drill. It was costing them about $500,000 a day to run the rig & they took a number of shortcuts to speed things up. '60 Minutes' ran an interview with one of the rig survivors & he ripped BP for being extremely lax in every possible way.
Some of the latest reports indicate that the blowout preventer might have not worked due to drill pipe being shot back up the well & getting rammed inside the pipe at the blowout preventer & the shear wasn't strong enough to shut off the flow. But that won't be know until the well is plugged & the preventer can be pulled back up.

What GWB meant was to leave private citizens as much of their own money as possible to spend, so that they are spending their OWN money, not the company's money.

The trouble with government spending is that there is little incentive on the government's part to maximize utility, the return that they get for expenditures. After all, if they run out of money, there's plenty more where that came from, the taxpayers' pockets. So, we get the porkulus program, Milorad trying to throw $40 million at NIU to assuage their grief after the shootings, Milorad actually giving $1 million to a church in violation of at least two provisions of the Illinois constitution, friends and family hiring programs, $600 toilet seats, on and on. We private citizens, on the other hand, have a finite amount of money to spend, and try to get the best value out of our money. All in all, spending by private citizens stimulates more wealth creation than any government stimuus program.

Some people think more government is the solution to all problems because that's worked so well in............actually that hasn't worked anywhere.

I do feel somewhat bad for people with that viewpoint because the collapse of Social Democracies in Europe has proven to the world that their ideas simply don't work. It must be terrible to find out that the thing you believed in your whole life is a failure. That's why they lash out so much. They're in the anger stage of grief.

ZORN REPLY -- Government is the solution to many, many problems Alex, and only a person with approximately zero knowledge of history would make such a blanket assertion. We can argue about the proper level of government and the jobs it should do, but this blanket government bashing is so ahistorical, so ignorant. Talk about being in denial.

Garry, even after the stock market run up and collapse, private citizens who invested their money would still have something. That's because they have nothing, repeat nothing, in Social Security, for two reasons:

1) We have no legal rights to Social Security.

2) Social Security is assetless.

Something is better than nothing.

To Eric: Government is the answer to some, not many, many problems. Not considering the things that government makes worse.

And Garry, by the way, even with the current mess, the Dow is up about ten times since 1980 or so. That's about an 8% rate of return, compounded annually, which is extremely reseasonable, and excludes dividends of around 1.5% - 2.5%. And your point is . . . what exactly?

Alex, hope springs eternal, I guess. I keep hoping that I'll be able to get some constructive conversation out of him.

He reminds me of two things, though. One is a line from a radio commercial of a few years ago: "Are you deliberately trying to irritate me, or are you just dense?"

And the other: "Don't feed the trolls."

Garry, I've had a 401(k) at work for as long as there have been 401(k)'s. If Social Security had had as good a rate of return as my 401(k), mostly invested in stocks, has had, MCN wouldn't have had to make his comment of 9:47 AM.

Oh, and Eric, one time I misread one your comments and when you pointed it out to me I admitted I was wrong and read you wrong. Reciprocity?

ZORN REPLY -- I gave you credit in my mind, I suppose, for not asserting something so patently false as "some people think more government is the solution to all problems." I didn't see the word "all," perhaps because I doubt there is a single person in the media or in popular political circles who makes such a claim. A lot of people think more government is the solution to some problems.... you might even be one of them. So inventing a cartoon crazy person who thinks all problems can be solved by more government and then deriding them and saying they're frantic these days... is that what your comment was all about?

@Zorn: I wish I could agree that only a crazy cartoon person would believe that more government is the solution to all problems but I've read too much about Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong Il to do so, unless they and their ilk qualify as crazy cartoon people. So maybe you got me there.

ZORN REPLY -- I was assuming, once again, that your universe was American or even western democratic political figures and commentators somewhere between the five yard lines, not third-world dictators. Is it really Kim Jong Il to whom you referred when you wrote, "It must be terrible to find out that the thing you believed in your whole life is a failure. That's why they lash out so much. They're in the anger stage of grief." Who, then, are you referring to? Which person holding this all encompassing faith in government is now disillusioned and lashing out in anger?

My objection is to this caricature you have of you foes, those who don't want to nationalize industry and ban free enterprise, but who feel that, yes, government needs to regulate industry, needs to provide special care and services to the disabled and the elderly and the poor, ought to step in to prevent massive industries from collapsing.

Perhaps government should step in to assist collapsing industries. Perhaps. Banking, maybe, although the way it handled matters in the 30s, 80s, and now, it's open to dispute whether things got better or worse.

Autos? GM and Chrysler aren't nationalized? And maybe GM would have been better off going BK--it wouldn't have this massive government equity overhang, that's one point.

So, as a conservative, I appreciate and agree with your points about the need for government regulation and occasional intervention in the marketplace. Whether running a bankrupt retirement plan is the best way to help the elderly and soon to be elderly (like you and me) is an entirely different matter. So is screwing holders of secured auto bonds while protecting unsecured union members who happen to vote Democratic.

Sorry, I didn't mean to dodge your point. I'll be happy to let you refute your own characterization of my comment. Please tell me five major problems in US society that you think would benefit from less government.

About "Change of Subject."

"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
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Contributing editor Jessica Reynolds is a 2012 graduate of Loyola University Chicago and is the coordinator of the Tribune's editorial board. She can be reached at jreynolds at tribune.com.